Students

ANTH702 – Core Issues in Anthropological Theory II

2014 – S2 Day

General Information

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Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit Convenor
Eve Vincent
eve.vincent@mq.edu.au
Contact via eve.vincent@mq.edu.au
W6A, 611
Tuesday 1-3pm
Credit points Credit points
4
Prerequisites Prerequisites
Admission to MRes
Corequisites Corequisites
Co-badged status Co-badged status
Unit description Unit description
This unit is the second of two core anthropology units that provide a grounding in theoretical, methodological and interpretive issues that are currently being debated by anthropologists. These courses form the core of the anthropology specialisation for the MRes. The issues covered will vary from year to year according to contemporary developments in anthropology and the interests of the course convenor. Others may be more enduring, such as the theoretical issues related to kinship, to politics and power and the relation between individual and society, the “writing culture” debate, “Orientalism” and the problem of the “other,” and cultural relativism.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  • Gain an understanding of long-standing debates surrounding fieldwork, ethnography, anthropology and representation
  • Familiarise themselves with anthropological perspectives on embodiment, the emotions and senses.
  • Acquire insight into cutting edge anthropological concerns such as ontology and human-environment relations
  • Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion
  • Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Assessment Tasks

Name Weighting Due
Seminar participation 10% Weekly
Report on discussion 20% One week after discussion
Critical review 20% Tuesday October 14 (in class)
Major essay 50% Monday November 17

Seminar participation

Due: Weekly
Weighting: 10%

Seminar attendance and participation are mandatory. Active engagement in our discussions is vital: please come to class well prepared, willing to contribute your ideas, and ready to listen to others' contributions.
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Gain an understanding of long-standing debates surrounding fieldwork, ethnography, anthropology and representation
  • Familiarise themselves with anthropological perspectives on embodiment, the emotions and senses.
  • Acquire insight into cutting edge anthropological concerns such as ontology and human-environment relations
  • Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion

Report on discussion

Due: One week after discussion
Weighting: 20%

Teams of two students will be responsible for facilitating one seminar discussion over the course of the session. With your partner you should prepare for the discussion by: carefully reading the week's required and extended readings; identifying central arguments and areas of potential confusion; generating starting points for class discussion. Your team will assume responsibility for introducing and guiding a respectful, well-informed discussion of the weekly topic. Creativity is encouraged.

One week after the discussion you will submit a 1000-1200 word report on the weekly discussion topic. The report should incorporate both your preparation for the discussion and any insights on the topic that came out of the discussion. Your final mark for this assessment task will incorporate both a mark for the facilitation and a mark for the written report.
 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Gain an understanding of long-standing debates surrounding fieldwork, ethnography, anthropology and representation
  • Familiarise themselves with anthropological perspectives on embodiment, the emotions and senses.
  • Acquire insight into cutting edge anthropological concerns such as ontology and human-environment relations
  • Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion

Critical review

Due: Tuesday October 14 (in class)
Weighting: 20%

Students will prepare a 1000-1200 word book review of a contemporary ethnography. The review should constitute a critical appraisal of the author's arguments. The review is expected to engage to some extent with the theoretical material covered in the course. You should situate your discussion of the ethnography within a broader context, indicating an awareness of methodological questions, theoretical paradigms and key influences. A list of suggested ethnographies will be circulated in Week 3, but students are also encouraged to use this opportunity to closely read a work of key relevance for their thesis topic.
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Major essay

Due: Monday November 17
Weighting: 50%

Students will submit a 3000 word research essay devoted to one of the issues canvassed over the course of the session.
 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Delivery and Resources

All required readings for this unit are available via iLearn. Extended readings have been placed on reserve in the library.

iLearn login is via: https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/ Students are required to have regular access to a computer and the internet. Mobile devices alone are not sufficient. For technical support go to: http://mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/informatics/help For student quick guides on the use of iLearn go to: http://mq.edu.au/iLearn/student_info/guides.htm

Unit Schedule

Week 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE UNIT / RESEARCH ETHICS.

Tuesday August 5

If you haven’t already taken a research ethics training course, please register for and take this free online ethics training course: Human Research Ethics for the Social Sciences and Humanities, at http://www.mq.edu.au/ethics_training.  Come to class prepared to discuss your research projects and any ethical dilemmas you anticipate facing.

Required reading:

  1. Section 1 of the National Health and Medical Research Council's National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007).
  2. AIATSIS Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies (GERAIS)

 

 

Week 2. ANTHROPOLGY, ETHNOGRAPHY, REPRESENTATION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

Tuesday August 12

Required reading:

  1. James Clifford, 'On Ethnographic Authority,' in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art.  Harvard University Press, 1988, 21-54.
  2. Edward Said, 'Introduction', to Orientalism, Vintage Books, 1978, 1-28.
  3. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 'Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness,' in Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, edited by Richard G. Fox.  SAR Press 1991, 17-44.

Extended reading:

  • Lila Abu-Lughod, 'Writing Against Culture,' in Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, edited by Richard G. Fox.  SAR Press 1991, 137-162.

  • James Clifford and George E. Marcus (eds) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1986.

  • Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

 

 

Week 3. ANTHROPOLOGY IN A GLOBALISED WORLD: INTERCONNECTIONS AND MOBILITIES

Tuesday August 19 (Discussion led by Group 1)

Required reading:

  1. Introduction to Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo's (eds), The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2002.
  2. 'Introduction' and 'Frontiers of Capitalism' (Chapter 1). Anna Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2005.
  3. Aihwa Ong, 'Spirits of Resistance' in Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. (This whole book is available online via the Macquarie University Library catalogue.)

Extended reading:

  • Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo (eds), The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader.  Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2002.
  • Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.

 

Week 4. ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE BODY

Tuesday August 26 (Discussion led by Group 2)

Required reading:

  1. Marcel Mauss,  `Techniques of the Body', Economy and Society 2 (1), 1973: 70-88.
  2. Loïc Wacquant, 'Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labor Among Professional Boxers.' Body and Society 1-1 (March), 1995, 65-94.
  3. Pierre Bourdieu, The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles' (Chapter 3) in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press, 1984, 169-256.

Extended reading:

  • Margaret Lock, 'Cultivating the Body: Anthropology and Epistemologies of Bodily Practice and Knowledge', Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 22, 1993, 133-155.
  • Andrew Strathern, Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

 

Week 5. QUESTIONS OF GENDER

Tuesday September 2 (Discussion led by Group 3)

Required reading:

  1. Saba Mahmood, 'The Subject of Freedom' (Chapter 1). Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005.
  2. Barbara Tedlock, 'Works and Wives: On the Sexual Division of Textual Labor' in Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon (eds), Women: Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, 267-286.
  3. Aren Aizura, Feminine Transformation: Gender Reassignment and Surgical Tourism in Thailand, Medical Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 4, 2010, 1-20

Extended reading:

  • Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.  New York: Routledge, 2006.
  • Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon (eds), Women: Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
  • Marilyn Strathern, 'Groups: Sexual Antagonism in the New Guinea Highlands' in The Gender of the Gift. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, 43-65.

 

Week 6. POWER AND RESISTANCE

Tuesday September 9 (Discussion led by Group 4)

Required reading:

  1. Michel Foucault, 'Two Lectures' in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980, 78-108.
  2. James Scott, 'Everyday Forms of Resistance', Copenhagen Papers, 4-89, 33-62.
  3. Introduction to Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 1-18.

Extended reading:

  • Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage Books, 1976.
  • Gilian Cowlishaw, 'Injury and Agency' in Blackfellas, Whitefellas and the Hidden Injuries of Race. Malden, MA: Blackwell,  2004.

 

Week 7. SENSES, EMOTIONS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Tuesday September 16 (Discussion led by Group 5)

Required reading:

  1. Michael Jackson, 'From Anxiety to Method in Anthropological Fieldwork: An Appraisal of George Devereux's Enduring Ideas.' In James Davis and Dimitrina Spencer (eds), Emotions in the Field: The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010, 35-54.
  2. Catherine Lutz, Introduction to Unnatural emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
  3. Jean Briggs, 'Nilak's Family.' In Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970, 187-224.
  4. Paul Stoller, 'The Taste of Ethnographic Things.' In 'The Taste of Ethnographic Things Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, 15-34.

Extended reading:

  • Paul Stoller, 'Sound in Songhay Possession' in The Taste of Ethnographic Things. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, 101-112.
  • Catherine Lutz,Unnatural emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

 

University Break: September  22 - October 3

 

Week 8. ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Tuesday October 7

Required reading

  1. Introduction to Tim Ingold,The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, London; New York: Routledge, 2011.
  2. Kirsten Hastrup, Emotional Topographies: The Sense of Place in the Far North, In James Davis and Dimitrina Spencer (eds), Emotions in the Field: The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010,191-211.
  3. Deborah Bird Rose, 'Looking Into Extinction' in Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2011

Extended reading:

  • WATCH: 'Anthropology Beyond humanity' - Professor Timothy Ingold. (Available on Macquarie University, Department of Anthropology homepage.)

 

 

Week 9. ETHNOGRAPHIC BIOGRAPHIES

Tuesday October 14

Required reading:

  1. Jeremy Beckett, Frontier Encounter: Stanner's Durmugam. In Jeremy Beckett and Melinda Hinkson (eds), An Appreciation of Difference: W.E.H. Stanner and Aboriginal Australia, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2008.
  2. Excerpts from Ruth Behar, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

OR

      2. Excerpts from Vincent Crapanzano, Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

OR

      2. Excerpts from  Anna Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-way Place, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993.

 

Week 10. RELIGION/ONTOLOGY (Preparation for Research Week)

Tuesday October 21

Required reading:

  1. Michael Scott,'The Anthropology of Ontology (religious science?)' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 19, 2013, 859-872.  

 

Week 11. RESEARCH WEEK (Attend symposium / work on individual research essays)

No class

 

Week 12. DISORDER SYMPOSIUM at the University of Sydney

Tuesday November 4

Students are encourage to attend the Disorder Symposium at the University of Sydney. We will discuss fund raising strategies in class, early on in the session, if any students find the cost of registration prohibitive. See http://disordersymposium.wordpress.com/

 

Week 13. DISCUSSION: Major themes of research week; Major themes of Disorder symposium; Individual research projects.

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Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central. Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:

Academic Honesty Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/academic_honesty/policy.html

Assessment Policy  http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/assessment/policy.html

Grading Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/grading/policy.html

Grade Appeal Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/gradeappeal/policy.html

Grievance Management Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/grievance_management/policy.html

Disruption to Studies Policy http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/disruption_studies/policy.html The Disruption to Studies Policy is effective from March 3 2014 and replaces the Special Consideration Policy.

In addition, a number of other policies can be found in the Learning and Teaching Category of Policy Central.

Student Code of Conduct

Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/support/student_conduct/

Student Support

Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/

Learning Skills

Learning Skills (mq.edu.au/learningskills) provides academic writing resources and study strategies to improve your marks and take control of your study.

Student Services and Support

Students with a disability are encouraged to contact the Disability Service who can provide appropriate help with any issues that arise during their studies.

Student Enquiries

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IT Help

For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://informatics.mq.edu.au/help/. 

When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.

Graduate Capabilities

PG - Discipline Knowledge and Skills

Our postgraduates will be able to demonstrate a significantly enhanced depth and breadth of knowledge, scholarly understanding, and specific subject content knowledge in their chosen fields.

This graduate capability is supported by:

Learning outcomes

  • Gain an understanding of long-standing debates surrounding fieldwork, ethnography, anthropology and representation
  • Familiarise themselves with anthropological perspectives on embodiment, the emotions and senses.
  • Acquire insight into cutting edge anthropological concerns such as ontology and human-environment relations
  • Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Assessment tasks

  • Critical review
  • Major essay

PG - Critical, Analytical and Integrative Thinking

Our postgraduates will be capable of utilising and reflecting on prior knowledge and experience, of applying higher level critical thinking skills, and of integrating and synthesising learning and knowledge from a range of sources and environments. A characteristic of this form of thinking is the generation of new, professionally oriented knowledge through personal or group-based critique of practice and theory.

This graduate capability is supported by:

Learning outcomes

  • Familiarise themselves with anthropological perspectives on embodiment, the emotions and senses.
  • Acquire insight into cutting edge anthropological concerns such as ontology and human-environment relations
  • Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Assessment tasks

  • Report on discussion
  • Critical review
  • Major essay

PG - Research and Problem Solving Capability

Our postgraduates will be capable of systematic enquiry; able to use research skills to create new knowledge that can be applied to real world issues, or contribute to a field of study or practice to enhance society. They will be capable of creative questioning, problem finding and problem solving.

This graduate capability is supported by:

Learning outcome

  • Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Assessment task

  • Major essay

PG - Effective Communication

Our postgraduates will be able to communicate effectively and convey their views to different social, cultural, and professional audiences. They will be able to use a variety of technologically supported media to communicate with empathy using a range of written, spoken or visual formats.

This graduate capability is supported by:

Learning outcomes

  • Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion
  • Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Assessment tasks

  • Seminar participation
  • Report on discussion
  • Major essay

PG - Engaged and Responsible, Active and Ethical Citizens

Our postgraduates will be ethically aware and capable of confident transformative action in relation to their professional responsibilities and the wider community. They will have a sense of connectedness with others and country and have a sense of mutual obligation. They will be able to appreciate the impact of their professional roles for social justice and inclusion related to national and global issues

This graduate capability is supported by:

Learning outcome

  • Gain an understanding of long-standing debates surrounding fieldwork, ethnography, anthropology and representation

Assessment tasks

  • Seminar participation
  • Report on discussion

PG - Capable of Professional and Personal Judgment and Initiative

Our postgraduates will demonstrate a high standard of discernment and common sense in their professional and personal judgment. They will have the ability to make informed choices and decisions that reflect both the nature of their professional work and their personal perspectives.

This graduate capability is supported by:

Learning outcomes

  • Gain an understanding of long-standing debates surrounding fieldwork, ethnography, anthropology and representation
  • Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion

Assessment tasks

  • Seminar participation
  • Report on discussion